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  • Earliest hunting scene in prehistoric art

    Author(s)
    Aubert, Maxime
    Lebe, Rustan
    Oktaviana, Adhi Agus
    Tang, Muhammad
    Burhan, Basran
    Hamrullah
    Jusdi, Andi
    Abdullah
    Hakim, Budianto
    Zhao, Jian-xin
    Geria, I Made
    Sulistyarto, Priyatno Hadi
    Sardi, Ratno
    Brumm, Adam
    Griffith University Author(s)
    Oktaviana, Adhi A.
    Brumm, Adam R.
    Aubert, Maxime
    Year published
    2019
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Abstract
    Humans seem to have an adaptive predisposition for inventing, telling and consuming stories1. Prehistoric cave art provides the most direct insight that we have into the earliest storytelling2,3,4,5, in the form of narrative compositions or ‘scenes’2,5 that feature clear figurative depictions of sets of figures in spatial proximity to each other, and from which one can infer actions taking place among the figures5. The Upper Palaeolithic cave art of Europe hosts the oldest previously known images of humans and animals interacting in recognizable scenes2,5, and of therianthropes6,7—abstract beings that combine qualities of ...
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    Humans seem to have an adaptive predisposition for inventing, telling and consuming stories1. Prehistoric cave art provides the most direct insight that we have into the earliest storytelling2,3,4,5, in the form of narrative compositions or ‘scenes’2,5 that feature clear figurative depictions of sets of figures in spatial proximity to each other, and from which one can infer actions taking place among the figures5. The Upper Palaeolithic cave art of Europe hosts the oldest previously known images of humans and animals interacting in recognizable scenes2,5, and of therianthropes6,7—abstract beings that combine qualities of both people and animals, and which arguably communicated narrative fiction of some kind (folklore, religious myths, spiritual beliefs and so on). In this record of creative expression (spanning from about 40 thousand years ago (ka) until the beginning of the Holocene epoch at around 10 ka), scenes in cave art are generally rare and chronologically late (dating to about 21–14 ka)7, and clear representations of therianthropes are uncommon6—the oldest such image is a carved figurine from Germany of a human with a feline head (dated to about 40–39 ka)8. Here we describe an elaborate rock art panel from the limestone cave of Leang Bulu’ Sipong 4 (Sulawesi, Indonesia) that portrays several figures that appear to represent therianthropes hunting wild pigs and dwarf bovids; this painting has been dated to at least 43.9 ka on the basis of uranium-series analysis of overlying speleothems. This hunting scene is—to our knowledge—currently the oldest pictorial record of storytelling and the earliest figurative artwork in the world.
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    Journal Title
    Nature
    Volume
    576
    Issue
    7787
    DOI
    https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1806-y
    Subject
    Science & Technology
    Multidisciplinary Sciences
    Science & Technology - Other Topics
    LATE PLEISTOCENE
    PALEOLITHIC ART
    Publication URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/10072/397337
    Collection
    • Journal articles

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